• 19 killed in gas truck blast as fireball rips through cars, homes in Mexico

    An explosion of a gas tanker truck north of Mexico City killed at least 19 people. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

    By Dave Graham and Lizbeth Diaz, Reuters

    MEXICO CITY -- A gas tanker truck exploded on a highway north of Mexico City early on Tuesday, killing at least 19 people and injuring 36 others as a fireball tore through cars and homes.

    Pablo Bedolla, mayor of the Mexico City suburb of Ecatepec, said 19 people died in the blast that engulfed early morning traffic.

    Victor Rojas / AFP - Getty Images

    Remains of a gas tanker are seen amid charred wreckage next to a highway north of Mexico City on Tuesday. The resulting explosion killed at least 19 people.

    Television footage showed burned out vehicles and debris strewn all over the highway on the edge of the capital.

    "It was a ball of fire which exploded as though they'd put a spotlight in the whole window," resident Carlos Gonzalez Silva, who was in a nearby house at the time of the blast, told Mexican radio. "We opened the door and it was like fire had blown through the whole of the garden."

    Arturo Vilchis, head of emergency services in the State of Mexico, which abuts the capital, said 36 people were injured and that 13 of them had been hospitalized. Twenty homes and 16 vehicles were damaged by the explosion, he added.

    Mexican radio station Formato 21 said a family of four, including two children aged 11 and 6, were among the dead.

    In January, a massive blast at the headquarters of state oil giant Pemex in downtown Mexico City claimed dozens of lives.

    Media reports said the gas tanker did not belong to Pemex. The state oil company said it would help the company involved in rescue efforts. 

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  • Mexican journalists' sons killed; seven bodies found near Mexico City

    By Gabriel Stargardter, Reuters

    MEXICO CITY — Gunmen executed the sons of two prominent Mexican journalists in the northern city of Chihuahua, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office said on Sunday, and police found seven bodies dumped in a Mexico City suburb.


    Alfredo Paramo, 20, and Diego Paramo, 21, were shot dead in Chihuahua early on Saturday after being chased through the streets by gunmen in a car, said spokesman Carlos Gonzalez.

    They are the sons of well-known Mexican financial journalist David Paramo, who hosts a radio show, appears on TV Azteca and has a national newspaper column, and Martha Gonzalez, the editor of the local El Peso newspaper.

    "We still don't know what they were doing there," Carlos Gonzalez said. "But this has nothing to do with the professional activities of their parents."

    Mexican journalists are often targeted and killed by drug cartels for reporting on their activities. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based advocacy group, says 25 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 1992.

    In a separate incident, authorities found seven bodies dumped in a car in a Mexico City suburb on Sunday morning, a local police official said.

    Two of the men were found naked. Police have identified three of the men, who ranged in ages from 14 to 42, the official said.

    It appeared all seven men, who were found in the suburb of Ecatepec, had been shot, the official said.

    Last year, police discovered eight corpses dumped in the down-at-the-heels suburb of 2 million people.

    Ecatepec lies in the State of Mexico, which borders the capital to the north and where more than half the population of greater Mexico City lives.

    Until 2011, Enrique Pena Nieto, now the president of Mexico, was the governor of the State of Mexico.

    He has vowed to take a different tack than his presidential predecessor, Felipe Calderon, who sent in the troops to tackle the warring drug cartels. Pena Nieto has focused instead on stopping kidnapping and extortion.

    Roughly 70,000 people have died in drug-related killings since 2006, when Calderon launched his military-led campaign. More than 4,200 have died in the first four months of Pena Nieto's term, a slower pace than early 2012.

    Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

  • Earthquake hits western Mexico, felt 200 miles away

    By Gina Gentilesco and Andrew Rafferty, NBC News

    A 5.9 magnitude earthquake hit western Mexico late Sunday, powerful enough to be felt 200 miles away in Mexico City but not causing any damage or injuries, according to preliminary reports.

    The quake hit off the country’s western coast, according the U.S. Geological Survey. Local authorities have not indicated anyone has been hurt or and property has been damaged, Telemundo’s Mexico City Bureau reports.

    Residents in Mexico City briefly ran outdoors when the shaking began, then returned to homes and businesses shortly after, a witness told Reuters.

    On Saturday a deadly earthquake hit southwestern China, killing more than 200 people and leaving rescuers struggling to search for survivors.

  • 5.8-magnitude earthquake rattles Mexico City


    By Matthew DeLuca, Staff Writer, NBC News

    A 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck Oaxaca, Mexico, on Tuesday, causing buildings to sway as far away as Mexico City, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

    Oaxaca is about 300 miles from Mexico City, where the tremors set off earthquake alarms, The Associated Press reported.

    Staff at the Hotel Palacio Borghese in Oaxaca told NBC News that the quake set off the alarms, but that they did not feel it.

    There were minor aftershocks in the city of Pinotepa Nacional on the Pacific Coast, but no reported injuries, Oaxaca Governor Gabino Cue tweeted on Tuesday.

    The quake’s epicenter was about 20.5 miles deep, according to the USGS.

    Reuters contributed to this report.

  • Three more bodies found in rubble of Mexico skyscraper explosion; death toll hits 36

    Bernardo Montoya / Reuters

    A makeshift memorial to victims of the Pemex skyscraper explosion was erected near an entrance to the headquarters of Mexico's state-owned oil giant. The number of confirmed dead reached 36 over the weekend as more bodies were pulled from the rubble. No cause has been found.

    By Michael O'Boyle and Adriana Barrera, Reuters

    MEXICO CITY -- Mexican rescue workers found three more bodies over the weekend amid the rubble of a deadly blast that tore through state oil firm Pemex's main office complex on Thursday, the government said as search efforts appeared to near a close.

    The death toll from Thursday's explosion stands at 36, Pemex said via Twitter. Rescue workers had been digging through the last sections of the building's basement and may soon call off their search. One person was reported still missing, and at least 121 people were injured.

    Attorney General Jesus Murillo said on Friday that it was too early to say whether the explosion was due to an attack, an accident or negligence, but he promised results of an investigation in the coming days.

    Murillo toured the site on Sunday but did not publicly comment on the progress of the investigation. Officials have communicated details through social media about the disaster, which struck just before a long holiday weekend.

    A powerful explosion shook the building housing the headquarters of Mexican oil giant Pemex. NBC’s Kristen Dahlgren reports.

    The investigation will test confidence in President Enrique Pena Nieto, whose Institutional Revolutionary Party ruled Mexico for most of the last century but lost power in 2000, when it was accused of fostering widespread corruption.

    Local media reported the three bodies were maintenance workers. A woman who worked as a secretary was still missing, but she was unlikely to be found so deep in the wreckage.

    The blast occurred two months into Pena Nieto's presidency, just as Congress was preparing to discuss his plans to open up the state-run energy industry to more private investment.

    Hobbled by heavy state taxation, Pemex saw production slump in the last decade and its safety record has been stained by a series of deadly accidents, including an explosion that killed about 30 at a gas facility last year.

    Related:

    PhotoBlog: Aftermath of the explosion

    Full Mexico coverage from NBC News

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  • Mexico City seeks cause of deadly Pemex blast; attack not ruled out

    Miguel Tovar/stf / Getty Images

    The aftermath of a deadly explosion at the complex that houses Pemex, Mexico's state-run oil monopoly, in Mexico City on Thursday.

    MEXICO CITY — Mexico's government vowed on Friday to find out whether an explosion that killed 33 people at the headquarters of its state-run oil monopoly Pemex was a deliberate attack or yet another stain on the company's safety record.

    Rescue workers continued to pull bodies from the debris on Friday and officials said the search would continue until they account for everyone inside the Mexico City building.

    Government officials have refused to speculate over what caused the explosion on Thursday but said they had deployed large teams of experts to pore through the wreckage.

    The government is determined to find out the truth, whatever that may be ... whether it was an accident, negligence or an attack, whatever," Attorney General Jesus Murillo said on Friday evening. "We are not going to rule out anything."


    He said the explosion did not cause a fire but refused to be drawn on what that implied about the cause. Parts of the reinforced concrete ground floor of the building caved in, and the ceiling was a mess of twisted metal pipes and ducts.

    The blast at Pemex's complex in the capital killed at least 33 people and a further 121 were injured. The scenes of chaos have dealt another blow to Pemex's image, just as Mexico's new government is seeking to open up the oil industry to more private investment.

    Speculation over the cause has ranged from a bomb attack, to a gas leak, to a boiler blowing up.

    "A fatal incident like yesterday's cannot be explained in two hours. We are working with the best teams in Mexico and from overseas. We will not speculate," Pemex's chief executive, Emilio Lozoya, said on Friday.

    National mourning
    New President Enrique Pena Nieto declared three days of national mourning.

    Pemex, which was created when Mexico nationalized its oil industry in 1938, is a symbol of self-sufficiency but it has also been blighted by corruption, inefficiency and frequent accidents costing hundreds of lives.

    The latest Pemex disaster is one of the first serious tests for Pena Nieto, who must overcome the legacy of his Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled for much of the last century.

    After seven decades in power, the party gained a reputation for corruption and cover-ups that have made Mexicans skeptical of whether they are being told the truth.

    Investors have been closely following how far he will go in enticing private capital to boost flagging oil output in a country that is the world's seventh biggest producer.

    "This incident speaks very poorly of the image of Pemex management, and that's interpreted as additional risk in the market,"said Miriam Grunstein, an energy researcher at Mexico's CIDE think tank.

    A Pemex official said the damaged area of the company's headquarters was used for human resources in the corporate and refining divisions. It did not have a boiler or gas installations, the official said.

    Former Pemex worker Ricardo Marin, 53, said there was nothing in the building that would explode and that the kitchen, where there would be gas, was on the other side.

    "The only thing that occurs to me is that it was an attack — but against whom? There's no one with an important job down there," he said, waiting outside the Pemex hospital where a friend was in intensive care. "Maybe it could be a message to Pena Nieto, but not even that has any logic."

    Pemex office worker Alfonso Caballero, who was one floor above the blast at the time, said he did not smell any gas and guessed it had been caused by machinery.

    Mexican officials have not ruled out sabotage.

    An official at the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said an "international response team" was on its way to Mexico City at the request of the Mexican government. The team includes explosive specialists and fire experts.

    Pemex CEO Lozoya said the four floors most affected by the explosion normally had about 200 to 250 people working on them.

    About 10,000 staff work in the entire complex.

    Red Cross official Isaac Oxenhaut said the ceiling had collapsed in three lower floors of the Pemex building.

    Safety in the spotlight
    The blast followed a September fire at a Pemex gas facility near the northern city of Reynosa that killed 30 people. More than 300 were killed when a Pemex natural gas plant on the outskirts of Mexico City blew up in 1984.

    Eight years later, about 200 people were killed and 1,500 injured after a series of underground gas explosions in Guadalajara, Mexico's second-biggest city. An official investigation found Pemex was partly to blame.

    Whatever caused the explosion, the deaths and destruction will put the spotlight back on safety at Pemex, which only a couple of hours beforehand had issued a statement on Twitter saying it had managed to improve its record on accidents.

    "I suspect this was a bomb," said David Shields, an independent Mexico City-based oil analyst. "There are clandestine armies across Mexico, not just the (drug) cartels."

    Shields pointed to the bombing of several Pemex pipelines in the eastern state of Veracruz in 2007. A shadowy Marxist rebel movement took credit for some of the blasts.

    Meanwhile, George Baker, director of Energia.com, a Houston-based energy research center, said past history suggested the government could seek to exploit the incident.

    He pointed to the 1992 Guadalajara blast and the subsequent deal that followed to overhaul the Pemex administration led by then-President Carlos Salinas, like Pena Nieto a PRI member.

    "Salinas said he wanted a response from Pemex, and months later Pemex announced a restructuring. The restructuring had nothing to do with the Guadalajara accident, but it was used as a pivot to do something," Baker said.

    Pena Nieto has yet to reveal details of his Pemex reform plan, which already faces opposition from the left.

    Both Pena Nieto and his finance minister were this week at pains to stress the company will not be privatized.

    Related:

    At least 33 dead in Mexico City skyscraper explosion

  • At least 33 dead in Mexico City skyscraper explosion

    The death toll has risen to 32 in Mexico City after an explosion blasted the lower floors of a skyscraper housing the headquarters of state oil monopoly Pemex. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

    By Kari Huus, Staff Writer, NBC News

    The death toll from a powerful explosion in the Mexico City skyscraper complex housing the offices of state oil monopoly Pemex rose to at least 33, company and government officials said Friday.

    Twenty men and 12 women were killed, the company said — while 121 were injured, 52 of whom remain in hospital. 

    Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto arrived at the Pemex administration complex by helicopter Thursday night to supervise rescue operations, Pemex and the news agency La Prensa reported. Hundreds of Mexican military forces were sent to the complex to "preserve security," officials told newspaper El Universal.

    Rescue crews had searched most of the area damaged by the blast by Friday afternoon, said Attorney General Jesus Murillo said. But he added that survivors or more victims could still be found in the most unstable parts, which had not yet been fully checked.

    Emilio Lozoya Austin, director general of Pemex, which is short for Petrõleos Mexicanos, told Reuters Friday the the company was "working with the best teams in Mexico and from overseas" to find the cause of the explosion.

    He was flying home from a business trip to Asia when the blast occured. He said he extended his condolences "to all the families of Pemex workers who have lost their loved ones."

    The explosion took place in the basement garage of the auxiliary building, next to the company's 52-floor tower in a busy commercial and residential area, said Eduardo Sánchez, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.

    Stringer/Mexico/Reuters

    An injured woman is transferred to a stretcher outside the headquarters of state oil giant Pemex in Mexico City on Thursday.

    "They're conducting a tour of the building and the area adjacent to the blast site to verify if there are any still trapped so they can be rescued immediately," Sanchez said Thursday.

    A government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said preliminary findings suggested the blast was caused by aged boiler exploding in a building next to the tower, Reuters reported.

    The plaster ceiling of the basement collapsed, a spokesman for the local emergency agency said. He described conditions in the tower as "delicate."

    The main floor and the mezzanine of the auxiliary building were heavily damaged, along with windows as far as three floors up. 

    A man who was on the ground floor when the explosion occurred told Forum TV that the first casualties were taken to a clinic in the adjacent office tower, where several thousand people work.

    "It shook the building, and then we were evacuated," he said.

    Company touted safety record
    News of the blast came toward the end of the business day — just a few hours after the company had sent two messages on Twitter celebrating how much it had "reduced our accident rate in recent years," announcing that its "safety indicators" exceeded international standards:

    Twitter.com

    Twitter.com

    "An explosion took place in the B2 building of the administrative center," Pemex tweeted just after 4 p.m. local time (5 p.m. ET). "There are injuries and damage on the ground floor and mezzanine," it said, promising further information as it became available.

    Pemex initially said the building had been evacuated because of a problem with its electricity supply. It then said there had been an explosion, but it didn't give the cause.

    Milenio TV via NBC News

    The scene at Pemex headquarters in Mexico City on Thursday after an explosion. There was no official explanation for the blast.

    Television images showed people being evacuated — some on office chairs and gurneys. Emergency crews loaded people on stretchers into helicopters and airlifted them out of the area.

    "The place shook, we lost power and suddenly there was debris everywhere," Cristian Obele told Milenio news network. "Colleagues were helping us out of the building."

    Jose Cuellar, a mechanic who works near the complex, said he was repairing a car when an explosion rocked his entire workshop.

    "We went to see and saw people coming out injured," Cuella, 45,  told El Universal. "Other people were carrying them."

    Edgar Zuniga Jr. and M. Alex Johnson of NBC News, Telemundo and Reuters contributed to this report.

  • Debate rages over stray dogs after fatal maulings in Mexico City

    AP

    Dogs are shown behind bars in a composite photograph after they were caught near where where a woman, her baby and a teenage couple were found dead and covered in dog bites. The attacks set off a debate about the city's love-hate relationship with its canine population, and the guilt or innocence of 25 dogs trapped near the scene of the nightmarish killings.

    By Adriana Gomez Licon and Michael Weissenstein, The Associated Press

    MEXICO CITY -- Police scoured a hilly urban park for feral dogs and tested dozens of captured animals on Tuesday in a hunt for those responsible for four fatal maulings that have set off a fierce debate about how to handle the thousands of stray dogs that roam this massive city.

    Authorities have captured 25 dogs near the scene of the attacks in the capital's poor Iztapalapa district, but rather than calm residents, photos of the forlorn dogs brought a wave of sympathy for the animals, doubts about their involvement in the killings and debate about government handling of the stray-dog problem.


    Activists started an online campaign protesting the dogs' innocence and calling for authorities not to euthanize them. Tens of thousands of dogs are euthanized each year in Mexico if they are captured by animal control officers and not claimed within 72 hours. Many people re-posted the images of the dogs staring sadly from behind bars at an animal shelter.

    The hashtag for the campaign became the top trending topic on Twitter in Mexico by midday Tuesday, with some users furiously accusing the authorities of cruelty to animals and others sarcastically calling the dogs "political prisoners" and mocking the fuss over the fate of the animals.

    With more than 20 million people living in greater Mexico City, many of them lacking the resources to properly care for pets, stay dogs are an established problem. Nonprofit organizations such as Compassion Without Borders and Mexico City Dogs appeal for donations to help address the situation, and a 2007 documentary, "Companions to None," focused on abandoned pets.

    Officials said they were testing the captured dogs' fur for blood and examining their stomach contents to determine if they were the killers of the four people whose bodies were found covered in dog bites in two separate incidents in recent days.

    Grim discoveries
    Neighbors of the Cerro de la Estrella park found the bodies of a 26-year-old woman and a 1-year-old child in the area on Dec. 29, authorities said. The woman, Shunashi Mendoza, was missing her left arm, and prosecutors said that both she and the boy had bled to death.

    Then on Saturday, visitors to the park found the bodies of Alejandra Ruiz, 15, and her boyfriend Samuel Martinez, 16, who had gone to the park Saturday afternoon and were found dead from blood loss. The girl called her sister at around 7 p.m. pleading for help, Milenio Television reported.

    Mexico City prosecutors said that due to the gravity of the wounds they believed at least 10 dogs were involved in each attack.

    Dozens of officers returned to the park Tuesday to capture more of the feral dogs, which live in caves and hollows in the area.

    "Officer, you're hunting for dogs again, but don't you already supposedly have the 25 killers in custody?" shouted Liliana Hernandez, a psychologist and self-described street-dog-rights activist who lives near the park.

    Hernandez said many people let their dogs out during the day because their cinderblock homes are too small to keep them inside. Residents of their neighborhood started running frantically to collect their dogs when police began seizing strays Monday night, she said.

    Official response
    The furor has forced a public response from Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera, who called for animal-rights groups to help study the guilt or innocence of the 25 dogs, and the broader effort to reduce the number of street dogs in Mexico City.

    "We're not taking any decision. The dogs are in a shelter and we have to check on their health," he told reporters after a midday press conference.

    He also said the government would launch a new program to spay and neuter dogs, sending 25 mobile surgical units to neighborhoods where residents would be encouraged to take advantage of free sterilization for their pets.

    Eduardo Verdugo / AP

    Police fan out as they search for stray dogs in a park on the hilltop borough of Iztapalapa in southeast Mexico City on Tuesday.

     

    © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Travelers run for cover as cops kill cops at Mexico City airport

    Travelers run for cover as federal officers are killed by cops suspected of drug trafficking. Msnbc.com's Dara Brown reports.

    By msnbc.com news services

    MEXICO CITY -- Three policemen died in a shootout with two other officers suspected of drug trafficking at Mexico City's airport on Monday, as panicked travelers scrambled for cover in the busy facility.

    The shootout occurred when three federal officers approached the two suspects in the airport's Terminal 2, which handles international and domestic flights. Two agents were killed at the terminal and another later died of his injuries in hospital.

    More than a dozen shots were heard, Milenio Television reported. Television footage showed a body lying on the floor of the terminal in what appeared to be a publicly accessible area of the airport.

    Three shots rang out at first, witness Israel Lopez, a 23-year-old Mexico City student who had gone to the airport to see off a friend, told The Associated Press. Lopez didn't see who those shots were directed at, but then the gunfire came closer.

    Alfredo Estrella / AFP - Getty Images

    Federal Police officers stand guard at an entrance near the fast-food area of Benito Juarez international airport Terminal 2, in Mexico City, where two police officers were shot dead and a third was wounded on Monday. Airport spokesman Jorge Andres Gomez said authorities are going through the security cameras to know the exact events of the shooting.

    "We were in the food court, and some policemen came in and started shooting at another policeman who was on the floor," Lopez told the AP. "We dove to the floor and covered ourselves with chairs."

    Lopez said the shooters wore blue uniforms like those of federal police who provide security at the airport. He said the shooters then ran to the parking area "as if they were pursuing somebody," and he lost sight of them.

    'One of the safest places'
    Robert Gray, an evangelical missionary from Hart, Michigan, but who has lived with his family in the city of Puebla for the past four years, arrived at the airport after the shooting with his wife, two daughters and son to catch a flight back to the U.S. to visit family.


    "It's surprising to see it happening at the airport. It's one of the safest places in the city," Gray told the AP.

    The suspects, who remain at large, are believed to be part of a larger group of officials involved in a cocaine ring, Mexico's security ministry said in a statement.

    "The Federal Police has identified the two officers who opened fire and several investigative units are now focused on capturing them," the federal Public Safety Department said in a statement.

    14 mutilated corpses, threat message to drug cartel found in Mexican city

    Airport spokesman Jorge Gomez told Milenio that aircraft departures and arrivals continued normally after the incident.

    The airport said in a press statement that the terminal and flights were operating normally following what it described as "a dispute in an open-access area." But the food court remained blocked to public access for hours after the shooting.

    Slideshow: Narco culture permeates Mexico, leaks across border

    Mexico's drug war is also part of a drug culture with roots in music, movies and even religion

    Launch slideshow

    Mexico City has seen relatively low murder rates compared to the rest of the country, where drug violence has killed around 55,000 people in the past five-and-a-half years.

    Severed heads
    But attacks have been creeping up in the capital and its surrounding neighborhoods, with more than 300 gangland killings recorded last year.

    Mexico's airports and ports are busy areas for drug smugglers. So far this year federal police have seized more than 440 pounds of cocaine at the capital's airport, double the amount taken there last year.

    Alfredo Estrella / AFP - Getty Images

    A passenger speaks on her cellphone at Benito Juarez international airport Terminal 2, in Mexico City, where two police officers were shot dead and a third was wounded on Monday.

    In 2007, the severed heads of three employees of a customs brokerage firm were found near the airport and in the nearby state of Mexico.

    The decapitations were apparently retaliation for the seizure of a half-ton of Colombian cocaine at the airport, officials said at the time.

    Mexico got wrong man in high-profile drug arrest 

    In 2008, federal police chief Edgar Millan was gunned down inside his Mexico City home, and one of the suspects in that killing had worked as an anti-drug officer at the Mexico City airport.

    The suspect had a notebook with detailed information on drug trafficking at the airport, and officials said federal investigations into those operations may have been a key motive for Millan's killing.

    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

    Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world

     

  • Green effort in Mexico City leaves trashy mess

    Reuters

    Rubbish is piled up in between parked cars in downtown Mexico City, Dec. 26. After city authorities shut down the Bordo Poniente landfill, one of the largest dumps in the world, garbage has started to accumulate and trucks have been slower to pick it up, according to local media.

    Mexico City’s largest landfill shut down on Monday, part of a planned shift to recycle more of the city’s garbage, but the green effort left piles of trash across the city. With locals complaining, garbage truck drivers counter that they’re unable to move as much trash as before since they’re having to drive farther to get rid of it.

    The new system requires drivers to haul their trash 3 to 4 hours away from downtown, whereas previously it only took an hour. “The trucks take a while to get there,” driver Joel Gara Murillo told the city’s Canal 11 TV station.

    On top of that, long lines have formed at the new transfer stations while the drivers and station workers get used to the new system.

    Read more about the landfill project.

    Marco Ugarte / AP

    A woman covers her face as she walks past piled up garbage that accumulated over the Christmas weekend in front of the Monument to Benito Juarez, one of Mexico's most important statesmen, in downtown Mexico City, Dec. 26. Garbage disposal workers complain that since last week's official closing of the Bordo Poniente city dump,one of the world's largest, they are backed up trying to get rid of the garbage.

    Reuters

    Rubbish is piled up next to the monument of Mexico's late President Benito Juarez in Mexico City, Dec. 26.